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Showbuzz
Web posted on:
Thursday, February 11, 1999 1:55:01 PM EST
Today's buzz stories:
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Pitt
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LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- Superior Court Commissioner Victor Reichman has ruled that a woman who allegedly climbed through a window at Brad Pitt's home and stayed for 10 hours is barred from contacting the actor and must stay 100 yards away from him for the next three years.
Athena Marie Rolando, 19, was told by Reichman on Wednesday that Pitt "certainly has a right to be free from intruders." Pitt had been granted a temporary restraining order to keep the woman away, but his attorneys wanted a three-year order. "Everything is going to be fine," Rolando said outside court, adding, "I'd actually like to file a restraining order against Mr. Pitt himself to stay away from me."
Pitt contends the woman left "many menacing and bizarre letters" at the front gate of his home beginning in September 1996, and police say she hoisted herself through a window into Pitt's home in the Santa Monica Mountains on January 7 and spent 10 hours inside. Pitt, the star of "Meet Joe Black" and "Legends of the Fall," was not home at the time.
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Springsteen
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NEWARK, New Jersey (CNN) -- A legal battle between Bruce Springsteen and a small New Jersey record company rages on. The most recent development: Springsteen has claimed Pony Express Records Inc. obtained fraudulent copyrights to some of his earliest recordings.
The allegation is in a counterclaim filed last month in federal court in response to a lawsuit filed by the record company, which accused Springsteen of using his influence in the
music industry to keep the recordings off the shelves by spreading word that they are bootleg material.
Springsteen is asking a judge to grant him $1 million in damages and bar the companies from making and selling discs, which would contain more than two dozen songs the Boss composed and recorded as a solo artist before his rise to stardom in the early 1970s.
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Cromwell in "Babe"
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NORFOLK, Virginia (CNN) -- James Cromwell, who co-starred opposite a lovable pig in the movie "Babe," is joining forces with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Cromwell and PETA are accusing a North Carolina farm of illegally beating and killing hogs, with PETA releasing a videotape showing farmhands bludgeoning sows with iron bars, metal canes and wrenches. In one scene, a worker apparently kills a lame hog by dropping a cinder block on its head.
The videotape was narrated by Cromwell, who played Farmer Hoggett in the film about a pig who thinks he's a sheepdog. A vegetarian, Cromwell nearly broke down at a news conference Tuesday. "Pigs are sensitive, intelligent animals. If you are moved at all by this film, please do your part. Stop eating pigs. The world will be a better place for all of us," Cromwell said on the videotape. The footage was taken by a PETA investigator who worked undercover this winter at Belcross Farms. Officials with Belcross denied the accusations and welcomed state inspectors to pay a visit to the farm.
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Wynette
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NASHVILLE, Tennessee (CNN) -- Nashville's coroner Wednesday turned down an appeal by Tammy Wynette's daughters to exhume the body of the "First Lady of Country Music" and perform an autopsy. The daughters wanted the coroner to investigate whether their mother died of natural causes, and without exhuming the body the coroner says he believes that is the case.
"Tammy Wynette was terminally ill and her death was due to natural causes," Davidson County Medical Examiner Bruce Levy told reporters in announcing his decision. Wynette, 55, died April 6 last year from what her personal physician Wallis Marsh diagnosed as a blood clot in her lungs. Blood clots were among several health problems the ailing "First Lady of Country Music" suffered from in her last years.
Three of Wynette's daughters had hired attorney Dan Warlick, claiming there were "curious" circumstances surrounding Wynette's death, including a delay in calling the police and her heavy use of prescription drugs. "We still don't know the cause of Wynette's death," Warlick said, adding he had telephoned the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency to ask it to investigate.
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Shakur
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PHILADELPHIA (CNN) -- U.S. District Judge Ronald Buckwalter dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed by a rap music critic against newsmagazines Time and Newsweek for their reports on her earlier lawsuit against the estate of slain rapper Tupac Shakur. C. DeLores Tucker's initial lawsuit sought $10 million from Shakur's estate, claiming the rapper's lyrics, in which he rhymed Tucker's name with an obscenity, caused emotional distress that led to "a loss of consortium."
Time and Newsweek both reported that the lyrics affected Tucker's sex life, something Tucker says wasn't true. She filed suit against the magazines, as well as dozens of other news outlets that carried stories on the lawsuit.
But the lawsuits against Time and Newsweek were thrown out by Buckwalter, who ruled that Tucker, a former Pennsylvania secretary of state, was a public figure in the eyes of the law. That means she had to prove that Time and Newsweek wrote the stories with "actual malice," knew they were inaccurate and would "embarrass and humiliate" her and her husband. The Tuckers did not meet that burden of proof, Buckwalter ruled. Buckwalter last month threw out the lawsuit against Shakur's estate. Shakur was shot to death in Las Vegas in 1996.
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